"Some tour operators are directly protecting millions of acres of endangered species habitat, among the last strongholds for rhinos and elephants. Others are helping to fund conservation work to save lions, leopards and cheetahs. There is also a strong argument to be made that a key reason the mountain gorilla is not yet extinct is because tourists are willing to fly to Africa and pay handsomely for the chance to see one in the wild, proving to governments and local communities the importance of protecting them....
Among the most important conservation lessons to emerge in the past 25 years is this: When local communities benefit from tourism, they become partners and allies in saving nature. Without that support, conservation will forever be an uphill battle. If the job that feeds your family and sends your kids to school depends on international visitors paying to see a wild elephant or to experience a coral reef teeming with marine life, that builds a global constituency for saving biodiversity right now."
This is a really good piece. Not only does the author recognise, without saying it, that supply curves slope upward, he/she also gets that market exchanges are win-win.
If people will pay to see animals and other parts of the natural world that they perceive to be "exotic" or even endangered, that creates an incentive for people to preserve those animals and places. Notice the win-win: we get a better environmental/ecological outcome and poor people have a path out of poverty.
This also seems relevant to the debate over "commodification." Commodifying things we value provides the information and incentives we need to get more of them, whether that's human kidneys or rhinos or anything else. Supply curves slope upward.